SKIPPACK — Hot dog king Jason Brown is clearly cutting the mustard in Skippack and he’s relishing every minute of it.

Brown once rolled around in a wood-fired pizza truck business with a couple of partners, but being a solo top dog with his traveling Love Hot Dog Company has its benefits.

“It’s just me this time. I like food and I like being mobile,” said the chef-owner, during a brief lull between customers one afternoon.

Love Hot Dog Company opened in the Skippack Farmers Market parking lot last July during National Hot Dog Month, and it seems like every day since then has been like the Fourth of July.

Advertisement

“Business took off like a bat out of hell,” Brown said. “There are times when you can’t get into the parking lot it’s so full. There will be a couple of dump trucks, state troopers, regular cars, PennDOT guys. We get guys coming from King of Prussia on their lunch hour. It’s crazy.”

During the winter you’ll find the truck here five days a week, but come summer it’s a seven-day operation.

Spotting a food truck may be a routine event in some places, but it’s something of a novelty here on Skippack Pike, particularly when that truck is beefing up traditional frankfurter options with $7 or $8 gourmet dogs and sausages — or “exotics,” as Brown calls them.

Is wild boar sausage with garlic and marsala wine exotic enough for you?

How about pheasant with cognac? Smoked duck with apple brandy?

For slightly less adventurous tastes, a Kobe beef dog snaps to attention and is ready for a dash of yellow or spicy mustard, a dollop of sauerkraut, chili, bacon jam, raw onions, cooked onions, or any of a variety of toppings, including all the fixings for an authentic Chicago style hot dog.

And they’re all free.

“I don’t nickel and dime customers,” said Brown, who swears by Chicago’s famed Vienna Beef as his $2.50 staple frank.

As a customer steps up to the window Brown regrets to inform him that he’s fresh out of his meaty mainstay, but upgrades the guy from a Vienna dog to a premium $4 mild Polish sausage at no extra charge.

“You treat people right and they come back,” Brown said.

Since plopping one of Brown’s plumpish beauties onto a regular squishy hot dog roll would be akin to mounting a Corvette ZR1 engine in a Toyota, Brown gets special rolls tailor-made for the task by Corropolese Bakery & Deli.

The culinary entrepreneur who claims to have no classical training dreams up his street-worthy hot dog creations in a commissary in Willow Grove.

“I perfect the recipe and then sub it out and have them made,” said the Harleysville resident.

“I change it up every two weeks, but it can change more often because I’ll bring something in thinking it will last and it’s gone in three days.”

A regular pulls in, jumps out of his truck and resolutely bypasses the artisanal dogs of the day for “four chili dogs … one for now and three to go.”

After he heads out, Brown noted that, like a lot of customers, the guy will often drop 30 or 40 bucks every time he stops by.

The average hot dogger spends $12 to $15, Brown noted.

The National Hot Dog & Sausage Council’s estimate that every American typically chows down on 70 hot dogs each year would seem to favor Brown’s recession-proof business idea.

Other LHDC offerings include homemade soups, cheesecake and steamed cheeseburgers, “like they do in Connecticut. Nobody south of Connecticut does steamed burgers, so it’s something we have that nobody else does,” Brown said.

But with LHDC’s famously wondrous wieners winning over devotees far beyond Skippack — at car shows, wineries and Spring Mountain Ski Area on winter weekends — don’t look for Brown to change the name to Love Hot Dog and Burger Company anytime soon.